Once upon a time I was hungry to hear as many sermons as I could hear: that time has gone. If I go to church I drag my feet and dread the “message”Most of the radio preachers (and all the TV preachers) I once paid close attention to, I now avoid. Why?

The answer is simple: words alone are powerless.

Before you accuse me of heresy, I do believe that the word of God is “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword”. I do believe that the Word of God spoke the universe into existence. And I do read my Bible knowing it’s food for my soul.

What I mean is that we Christians just talk too much and do very little. What’s the point in hearing or preaching a good sermon, if that’s as far as it goes? How is it that a church building can hold hundreds or even thousands of people, all being preached to every week-and the pastor may have spent many hours preparing his sermon- yet there’s no love, no true fellowship, no witness of love or truth to the outside world?

I’ve heard many sermons, and what makes me sick to my stomach is the fact that neither I, or the great majority of their hearers are changed by them. I live in a community where there are almost as many churches as houses-some very large, lavish and expensive-and yet outside those buildings is very little  sign of love, warmth, charity or fellowship. And if it makes me-one of the guilty-feel sick to my stomach, how does it make a holy, righteous, almighty God feel?

• DEVOTION